Brutal weather followed Earth's big freeze

JUST as the Earth was emerging from a 10-million-year freeze it was buffeted by violent global storms. Evidence of raging storms and huge waves has been discovered in sedimentary rocks formed 635 million years ago when the global ice age dubbed "Snowball Earth" was ending.

During the snowball, ice up to a kilometre thick covered most of the planet, some geologists think. A few have suggested the ice prompted the evolutionary leap from single to multicellular organisms that seems to have occurred at around the same time (New Scientist, 12 April 2003, p 30).

Philip Allen from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and Paul Hoffman from Harvard University have evidence that when the ice melted, the planet was flung into a period of brutal weather. They have found ripples in sedimentary rocks laid down 635 million years ago in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Namibia and Svalbard in the Arctic ...

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